


Sometimes Silence Is The Loudest Sound

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: All the paladins and Coran and Allura also show up, But only in the very end, Character Study, Gen, I don't know how to tag this, Introspection, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Adoptive Siblings, Keith's year in the desert, Kinda, so I didn't tag them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-05 03:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16359944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There were some nights in the desert that got too quiet. While he was being past from overcrowded foster home to overcrowded foster home, there were times that he would have killed for some peace and quiet, but he found that some of the nights in the desert when the wind didn’t whistle and the coyotes didn’t howl, when the rats that sometimes got into his shack didn’t scramble around, and when his heart was the loudest noise he could hear, it got to him. He had heard in stories when the silence had been described as deafening, but he had never understood it until now. Sometimes silence was the loudest sound.





	Sometimes Silence Is The Loudest Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Keith!  
> In honor of a certain paladin/blade, I've decided to post the very first fanfic that I ever started on (I wrote most of it out in late August, but I never got around to finishing it until now). It's not actually too bad (at least I think so, but I could be wrong ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.  
> And guess what, I actually edited this one guys! (somewhat. The first part I sort of had to to remind myself what was going on, and so that part is edited, and then the rest is only halfheartedly glanced over) There's probably still tons of mistakes though.  
> Enough with the rambling, let's get on with the story! Hope you enjoy!

 

Keith was no stranger to silence.

He had spent a year in the desert with no one else around, where his only constant companions was the ever-lingering sand that got everywhere from his shoes to his hair, the clothes on his back, his mother’s knife and his only link to who he really was, his own breathing, and his heartbeat. He also had other, occasional companions, like the coyotes howling and barking in the distance, the whistling wind across the desert, and the stars that glimmered so brightly, so innocently. There had been countless nights he had lied on the gritty sand and stared at them, wondering how something that used to be so happy could have killed the only one who had cared about him after his father’s death. How a place with lights that shone so warmly could be so cold. Sometimes on these nights, he wondered if his brother was still out there, alive somehow. He always tried to snuff out these thoughts, hope was a poison that could kill if misplaced.

He wasn’t a fool of course, he never had been, and he knew that the Garrison had been lying about the mission failing due to pilot error, Shiro was far too good of a pilot to have crashed, but that didn’t mean that the mission hadn’t failed in another way. After all, if it hadn’t, then Shiro would have come back for him by now. He had promised. And Shiro always kept his promises.

 

***

Keith folded his arms, leaning against the wall in what would have been a casual way had it been anyone but Keith. Somehow, though, he managed to make himself appear closed off in a way that Shiro still wondered at. He wasn’t very concerned though, he knew that that was just how Keith was.

“...It will only take a few months at most, I’ll be back before you know it,” Shiro reached over to ruffle his surrogate brother’s hair, who merely scowled at him and swatted away Shiro’s hand, but Shiro could tell he was hiding a smile.

“I know that. You’ve told me that several times already. I’ll be _fine_ ,” Keith replied, refolding his arms and pulling them tighter to his chest. “This isn’t the first time that I’ve been alone, you know. I can handle myself.”

Shiro gave a sad little smile at that. He knew that, but he wished it wasn’t true. He knew that Keith had been alone in the world for a long time, ever since his father had died in that fire, causing him to be passed around from foster home to foster home, never connecting with anyone and growing distrustful of others after more than a couple of bad foster homes. Keith had been alone for years until he met Shiro, and it took a very long time and a lot of patience to get Keith to fully trust him.

When Shiro first met Keith, he never thought that they kid who beat all records for anyone’s first time in the simulator and then stole his car would ever become this close to him, that they would become family. Shiro had always wanted a little brother, and he had found one in Keith. And he never could have asked for a better one.

“I know,” Shiro said sadly. There was a moment of silence, a comfortable lull in the conversation. Keith shifted a foot slightly, and settled further against the wall. Shiro himself let himself lean his back against the wall in the space next to Keith.

After another moment, Keith settled more, finally uncrossing his arms and letting out a light puff of air from his nose. His “I’ll miss you” was almost too quiet for Shiro to make out, but he did, casting a side-glance over to Keith, who had his almost-violet eyes trained on the screen projected on the wall, showing a map of the solar system. When Shiro followed his eyes, he realized they were trained on the small dot that marked Kerberos, looking so close on the map and yet so far in reality from the dot that marked Earth. Shiro felt a small smile tug at his lips, and he slid slightly closer to Keith, who didn’t move, even when their shoulders touched.

“I’m going to miss you too. But I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”

At this, Keith turned to face Shiro, purple eyes meeting grey. They seemed calculating, as though verifying Shiro’s words, as though Keith didn’t quite believe that Shiro would keep his promise. Shiro’s heart ached a little at the thought, but he knew that Keith didn’t mean anything personal about it, he had had a problem with promises being broken in his past. After they got close, they would often stay up late, sneaking off to the roof of the Garrison to stare at the stars that called to both of them, and traded stories about their past. Or, more accurately, it was usually Shiro telling Keith stories from his childhood as the younger listened with attentive ears. However, there were nights every now and then that Keith would tell Shiro something about his life pre-Garrison, most of his stories causing Shiro’s heart to hurt and giving him the desire to wrap his brother in a hug. One night Keith had bitterly told Shiro about all the people who promised that he would be a part of their family, that they wouldn’t send him away, that they wouldn’t hurt him, that they loved him. All were lies.

Keith seemed to finish verifying Shiro’s promise, as he let his eyes drop from Shiro’s gaze and he shook his head, causing Shiro’s heart to sink.

“Don’t make promises that you don’t have full control over. You don’t know what is out there, you don’t know _who_ might be out there. There might be something out of your control that prevents you from keeping that promise, so don’t make it.”

Shiro gave a small smile as he knocked shoulders with his brother. “Are you suggesting that I might be kidnapped by aliens? Which, for the record, do not exist?” The alien debate was  a common one, with Keith a firm believer, and Shiro a doubter.

This manages a smile out of Keith, who protests, “They are out there somewhere,” before his expression drew serious again. “Aliens aside. Don’t make a promise you don’t know for sure that you can keep.”

Shiro lets his face become serious once again, and he meets his brother’s eyes. “Okay. Even though _nothing_ like that is going to-” he cuts off after Keith gives him a glare. Shiro let’s out a sigh. “Okay. I promise that I will do everything within my control to come back as soon as possible. Satisfied?”

Keith gives him a smile. “It’ll do.”

“Good. Now hug time.” While Keith was still computing what Shiro said, Shiro had his arms wrapped up around Keith, who gave a weird sort-of squeak of confusion, going stiff for a moment before relaxing into the hug and wrapping his arms around Shiro, slightly awkwardly. Keith still wasn’t used to hugs, a fact that made Shiro squeeze him tighter.

 

(It was one of the last hugs that Keith would get for a long time. And would you look at that, there really were aliens, it turned out Keith was right all along.)

 

***

 

There were some nights in the desert that got too quiet. While he was being past from overcrowded foster home to overcrowded foster home, there were times that he would have killed for some peace and quiet, but he found that some of the nights in the desert when the wind didn’t whistle and the coyotes didn’t howl, when the rats that sometimes got into his shack didn’t scramble around, and when his heart was the loudest noise he could hear, it got to him. He had heard in stories when the silence had been described as deafening, but he had never understood it until now. Sometimes silence was the loudest sound.

It was on these nights that he took his hover bike, the one he and Shiro had saved up to buy together so they no longer had to sneak the old Garrison ones out to go driving, and sped across the desert. It was dangerous, he knew, to go at such speeds in such a uneven and rocky terrain in the dark, but he knew the desert like the back of his hand at this point, and the roar of the engine fought back the roar of the silence.

It was one of these deafening nights that had brought him to the cave with drawings of a blue lion.

 

***

 

Keith no longer knew what day it was. He had stopped keeping track a few weeks after getting kicked out of the Garrison, finding that it merely served as a reminder of how many days his brother should have been here, but wasn’t. If he had to guess, it would probably be about four months. Four long months that were spent alone in the desert. Well, mostly. There was only so much food that Shiro and Keith had kept at their little desert shack. Keith remembered the shack from when his father was still alive, and had one day led Shiro here while they were out on the hover bikes.  To be completely honest, Keith had been surprised that he had been able to remember its location after all these years. It had been fairly worn down in the years of neglect, but Shiro and Keith had cleaned it up and occasionally spend weekends or holidays there.

Keith had made a few trips to town when his food supply was nearly out, taking with him the money that Shiro and him had been keeping in a jar to save up for a second hover bike. It felt slightly wrong to use the money that they had both worked so hard to earn -mostly Shiro- but figured Shiro would have rather Keith use the money to not starve to death rather than to buy another hover bike. It’s not as if there was even a point to a second hover bike now anyways, Keith couldn’t help but think sometimes.

Other than those brief trips, though, Keith had been alone in the desert. It didn’t actually bother him all that much at first, he often could pretend that he was just on one of the Garrison holidays and spending time with Shiro at the shack, and at the moment Shiro was just in another room, or just outside, or just where ever Keith wasn’t. Sometimes Keith could even pretend that it was his father, off working at his job as a firefighter.

Keith knew that these thoughts were, of course, imaginary, but it was nice to pretend sometimes. Despite the fact that he hadn’t had a very good childhood, he certainly knew how to pretend.

He grew up pretending that one day, his mother would come home from where ever she was and he could meet her. From the way his father spoke of her, Keith would say that she was almost alien in how incredible she sounded.

Keith pretended that his father would come and get him from whichever home he had been put into at the time, that his father would swoop in and wrap him up in a great big hug with the promise that tomorrow they could go search for signs of mothman.

Keith pretended that if he just kept quiet enough, that if he was good enough, that if he followed the rules, they wouldn’t hurt him. He pretended that when he signed up for martial arts lessons that it was just so that he could do flips and impress people. He pretended that he was in clubs at school, that he was well liked, and that was the reason for him coming home late, not that he was learning to defend himself- they wouldn’t take well to that.

He pretended that the black eye was just from a fight at school when those people came by and were suspicious, but the people seemed to believe him by they shook their heads and muttered _trouble kids_ , to his foster parents, who had fake exasperated smiles as they nodded along, as if they really cared about him, even though he wasn’t always the easiest to handle. He knew that this was a good thing, he wouldn’t have to pretend that he had tripped down the stairs tomorrow in front of his teacher. Keith pretended that there was someone out there who cared for him, or who would care for him, and love him. He had to pretend, because sometimes pretending is all that you can do.

When Keith pretended that Shiro or his father was around, it sometimes made the silence more bearable, he could pretend that his breaths were theirs from just beyond the wall. However, pretending never seemed to help on the silent nights. The nights where even the wind was asleep. The nights when everybody but Keith was silent.

These nights just felt _wrong_ somehow. It may be that had he not been alone, had someone else been with him, they would have been sleeping in the same room, they would both be laying down near one another- on the floor usually, because they were always in constant argument of _you can sleep on the couch tonight_ and _no_ you _can sleep on the couch tonight_ that always ended up resolving itself with both of them piling blankets and cushions and pillows on the floor and both falling asleep to the sound of the other’s breathing, lying close enough to feel the warmth radiating of the other.

The silent nights just felt _wrong_. Instead of the floor, he was laying on the old couch, random springs poking into his back. Instead of falling asleep to Shiro’s even breathing, and  eventual snoring- though Shiro always denied the fact that he snored- he only had the sound of his own breathing, and the constant thump of his heartbeat. Instead of the warmth these sleepovers allowed Keith to fall asleep to, these nights were cold, and made him feel more alone than he had ever felt before.

Usually on these nights, he took the hoverbike and just drove, not really caring where he ended up, just anywhere to get rid of the silence. He often would ride all night, and he got lost once or twice, but for the most part, he was familiar enough with the desert that he knew where he was and how to get back to his shack, where he would return to only after the sun was far above the horizon, and the silence was no longer quite so loud.

One of these deafening nights Keith had revved up his hoverbike, and took off, purely letting his instincts guide him. It wasn’t unusual for him to do such, but normally he at least headed in a direction he was familiar with in the light. Tonight he decided that it wouldn’t be enough to go where he had been before, where he knew there was nothing but silence waiting for him, at least while going in a new direction, there was a chance of discovering something other than the quiet.

He drove for hours, through the darkest parts of the night, the hum of the engine and the howl of the wind against his face keeping him company. He knew the company was only temporary, but he didn’t let himself dwell on that fact.

He had just spotted a dark rock formation in the distance when he heard it. Or, more accurately, felt it. There was an energy humming underneath his skin, behind the adrenaline. It was almost like there was a presences, almost like it wasn’t just him and his hoverbike out there all alone. The feeling grew stronger and stronger the closer he got to the rock formation, and desperate for more of the feeling, he floored his bike as fast as it could go and shot across the desert towards the rocks.

As he got closer, he tried to make out details in the stone, but it was hard to in the light of the half moon and stars serving as his only light source. He began to slow when he got close enough to be cast in its shadow as the moon disappeared behind its looming peaks. He had a sense of suspicion come over him, was he finally going crazy? He had just gone after a _feeling_ into a completely unknown terrain after all. He naturally functioned on instincts, but whatever this feeling he had was definitely not his. He stared at the rock formation a moment after coming to a complete stop, and a flash of light caught the corner of his eyes, quick enough that he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t imagined it. After all, what could have caused that flash of light- which seemed an almost unnatural blue? He was sure he was losing it, he knew that people went crazy after spending too much time alone, but he couldn’t help but feel disappointed that madness had come upon him only after-- what was it, maybe four months?-- alone. Especially since he had spent much longer feeling alone than that before the Garrison. It seemed that the desert and no human contact outside of the interactions he’d had in town accelerated the process of madness.

He was ready to turn himself around, convinced he’d gone mad, but when Keith turned to leave, he felt another feeling of sorts crashing over him. It was almost human, but not quite. It seemed older-- more powerful. However, the feeling that came to him was a familiar one, desire that someone come looking for him, desire to no longer be alone, but also the acceptance that no matter what, that wouldn’t happen. Before he was aware of doing so, he had sped his hoverbike over in the direction that he had seen the light come from.

Keith wasn’t fully thinking of what he was doing, acting purely on instinct, which was something he was familiar with. Before he knew it, he had found a cave and getting the sense that this was it, he quickly hopped off his bike almost before it stopped moving, and sprinted inside. It no longer mattered that Keith thought he was going mad, it no longer mattered that Keith was feeling emotions that weren’t his own, all that mattered was getting in that cave and easing the waves of loneliness, of desire, of distress, of broken acceptance.

Once he stepped foot in the cave, those emotions all but disappeared, replaced with one of relief. It was so strong that Keith staggered a moment in the mouth of the cave. Once he regained his bearings and balance, he looked around the cave, looking for whatever was the cause of these emotions, but he couldn’t find anything. Couldn’t see anything that could possibly have transmitted such feelings-- not that he had any idea of what actually _could_. The only remotely strange thing about this cave were the tribal drawings on the walls, depicting a story of a lion.

Wait, a lion?

Tribal drawings were decently common in the caves in this area, more so than most people would think. However, those all depicted parts of everyday life for the ancient tribes, hunting, gathering, etc. They showed plenty of animals, but all those animals were native to the Americas, not a lion, which by all means they should have had no idea existed at all.

Keith frowned, approaching one of the drawings and absentmindedly reached his hand out as if to touch the drawing. However, when his hand was still an inch away, the drawing _glowed_ . Jerking his hand back and clutching it to his chest as if it had been burned, Keith stumbled away from the drawing. Cave drawings definitely weren’t supposed to do _that_.

Keith stared as the blue light pulsed for a moment, and then faded. Keith couldn’t do anything but stare, eyes blinking. He felt something close to amusement at his reaction, but it was gone before he could pinpoint it. Not that he could manage to do much more than blink and stare and wonder what the heck had just happened.

He stood there until he saw the sunlight beginning to creep into the mouth of the cave. He had been out here nearly all night, and with this realization, Keith was struck with a sudden wave of exhaustion. He should probably go back to his shack now, though the thought of spending hours on his hoverbike trying to find it before he could finally sleep felt very unappealing at the moment. The force in his head seemed to think this way too, and Keith felt something akin to clucking of a mother’s tongue at one of her child’s foolish ideas.

 _Stay_ , Keith felt more than heard, though the feeling was clearly a word. Keith glanced around the cave, debating his options. Normally he would not find sleeping in a cave comfortable or safe, they were always full of poisonous creatures and the ground was very hard and cold, but something about this cave seemed, okay. It seemed safe enough, and he had his emergency blanket strapped to his hoverbike outside, and that was comfortable enough.

The feelings seemed to agree with him, and almost seemed to purr. Keith sighed, he was definitely going crazy, but that didn’t matter at the moment. All that mattered to Keith at the moment was getting some sleep, judging by the sun’s position in the sky, it had been close 36 hours since he last slept, and he was _tired_. Which was weird, he had been up for much longer before, but he felt exhausted.

Sighing once more, he made his way out to the hoverbike, grabbing his blanket and leaving the bike out there. He knew no one would come by and steal it, and it was in a shaded spot so he knew that when he did get back on to make his way to his shack, the metal wouldn’t burn him.

Returning to the cave, Keith choose a spot against the opposing wall to the one with the glowing drawing, he was still a little freaked out about that if he were to be honest. As Keith settled, he felt the purring again, and it was oddly reassuring. Before he knew it, he was asleep, feeling as if he wasn’t alone in his slumber for the first time in months.

 

(Keith was relieved to learn about the lions at least in the way to know that he hadn’t been going crazy that night. Or any of the nights that followed when the silence got particularly deafening.)

 

***

 

The cave helped he to deal with the deafening silence. Anytime Keith had been overwhelmed by the silence, he had traveled to the cave. He had been reluctant the first few times, his believing that whatever was out there was causing him to go mad. However, when he ended up practically screaming and clawing at his ears one night when the silence got too loud, he realized that he was going mad out here anyways, but at least the cave brought on a calm source of madness.

After that, he always kept and emergency overnight kit on his hover bike, equipped with a blanket, food, water, some matches, and a small first aid kit. As almost an afterthought, and brief hesitation, Keith grabbed his mom’s old camera. His father had told him that she had been fascinated by _everything_ that Earth had to offer, and after realizing this, his father had given her a camera so she could have anything she thought was interesting in the palm of her hand. As a result, there were still many, though all incredibly dusty, photographs kept in a box under the couch. They were pictures of landscapes, of animals, of plants, and some of Keith and his father, but none of his mother. The only time Keith had gone through these pictures was before his father’s death, when looking at their smiling faces wasn’t a stab in the chest, and at the time he had been searching for any pictures of his mom. There weren’t any.

Keith sometimes frequented the cave during the day, snapping pictures of the lion drawings, which, it turned out, traveled all the way to the back of the cave, where it got dark enough he could no longer see his hand an inch away from his face without a flashlight and got cool enough for him to pull his cropped jacket around himself tighter. He didn’t travel to the back of the cave more than once, though. He didn’t like the cold, damp feel of it. He took these pictures and, after a moment of hesitation, had pinned them to the old cork-board in the shack. Had Shiro been around, he surely would have teased Keith about cryptid hunting again, a practice that Shiro insisted was silly, but always smiled fondly when Keith came to him rambling about the newest findings about mothman, and agreed to go with him whenever Keith asked if he wanted to join the search, the results of which he would always pin up on the cork-board.

But Shiro wasn’t here anymore to poke fun in the way a brother would. The cork-board was empty too, after the first night he had spent in the shack, Keith had torn everything down, all of his proud findings over the course of the years he had known Shiro, and burned it all. It wasn’t his proudest moment looking back on it now, but staring at it had been too painful a reminder of what had been something happen that never again would be. So now it was conveniently open for all his findings about the cave he decided to creatively call the Cave of the Blue Lion.

He spent months exploring the Cave of the Blue Lion, trying to figure out why it was there, how it was there, and why it was there. And why every time he went there, and eventually even from his little shack, he felt emotions that were decidedly not his. He figured it was probably just him going crazy, but somewhere in the back of his mind always told him that it wasn’t, that it was some being powerful enough to project these emotions on him. The thought sent unsettled shivers down his spine.

However, he had no proof of what was happening being real, or just madness from his wishful longing to no longer feel alone, that is, until the night his brother came home.

***

 

It was about three weeks before the event that he began feeling it. A sense of something that was hard to place at first, almost like anxiousness, but not nervous. Like adrenaline, but no feelings of fight of flight. Like impatience, but calm. It took Keith awhile to pinpoint it, but it felt almost like _excitement_ , like the thing was looking forward to something big that was going to happen soon. The idea of something so powerful and mysterious being excited should worry Keith, but he couldn’t feel bothered. If anything, the emotions were contagious. After what he would guess to be a year spent in the desert just exploring, just surviving, Keith was ready for some change.

Most of all, Keith was curious. What was the thing looking forward to? He tried asking it, both out loud and by trying to somehow channel his thoughts and feelings towards it, but the only response he got was more excitement and a feeling that was almost a word, _Soon_.

So Keith did something he had learned to do, though he still hated it, he waited.

The week before his brother came back, he had been camping out at the Cave when he got the sense to scout out the Garrison. It was an odd feeling, he hadn’t traveled in that direction since he was expelled, but he followed it anyways, after being with the thing for several months, he had learned to trust it. Strangely enough, the thing’s emotions didn’t leave him as he drove away. Part of him felt unease, his old conspiracy theories coming to the forefront of his mind as his imagination played out a scene of the thing taking him over, but he mostly dismissed this thinking. At this point, what did it matter if the thing took him over, no one would care, least of all him. (The thing seemed to growl at him after this trail of thoughts, but Keith ignored it).

He crested a hill, and then his breath stopped, and he jerked his bike to get it to halt as well. He could now make out the Garrison, just close enough to seem little people scrambling around like ants. He could make out most of the buildings, and could even identify some of the vehicles. But none of that was what had caused his breath to catch, though they were all part of the reason. The Garrison looked _exactly_ the same as how he had left it, how it had been when Shiro had been declared dead, how it was before the mission, how it was Keith had only just arrived.

None of this should have unnerved him, he really should have released it before, but somehow he had believed that everyone’s life had been shattered by the Kerberos mission, at least at the Garrison. At least somewhat damped, even a year away from it. That somehow it had impacted the Garrison at least to some degree to how it had affected him. He should have known that it hadn’t mattered to them, not that much. Sure, everyone had been sad the first few weeks after the news of the mission failure had reached the public’s ears, but they had gotten up and moved on. At the end of day, to the Garrison, the crew had just been another set of faceless people lost up in space. Even when the crew was two barely more than teenagers and one of their father’s who were now gone forever. It wasn’t the end of the world for them. Not like it had been for Keith, not when Shiro had been the only bright spot in his life since his father’s death.

Keith felt the familiar flash of anger at the Garrison, similar to when he found out that Shiro had allegedly died and taken the crew with him due to some small mistake on his part that Shiro never would have made. He revved his bike, and shot across the open space to the Garrison, staying out of its line of sight as much as possible and following where the thing’s emotions lead him, which happened to be the old science labs. Or rather, the place where basically any experiment that hadn’t worked was placed after the new science labs were built.

With so many failed experiments in there, the place was a ticking time bomb, it was only a matter of time before one of them blew up, which was why it was the only building outside of the Garrison’s walls. The Garrison had been remodeled a few years before Keith had gotten there, and this was when the new science building and new walls had been built.

Keith was a little wary of getting closer, all the rumors about the place from when he was there still stuck in his head, about what was _really_ inside the walls of the building, and disasters that the experiments within it walls had caused those who dared to sneak in. However, he got the feeling to go in from the thing, and so, parking his bike carefully in the shadows and covering it so it wouldn’t be seen or stolen, he crept into the building.

Or tried to, at least. He crept up to the front door and grabbed its handle, looking around to make sure no one saw him as he tried to twist the handle. It didn’t turn. He tried once more to be sure. It still didn’t budge

Locked. Of course it was locked. Inside there was a bunch of potentially harmful failed experiments that could literally exploded if a butterfly touched it wrong.

To make matters even worse, Keith heard voices approaching. He needed to get this door open, and fast. He looked around desperately for a key or something to open the door when his eyes landed on a keypad. He needed a code.

The voices got louder, as did Keith’s pounding heart. He closed his eyes for a moment. He needed to think. Suddenly, he was brought back to a memory.

_Shiro looked around the empty hallway as if trying to make sure no one was around to hear anything, and his voice dropped to a whisper._

_“Technically, I’m not supposed to let anyone else know my code, but I think that you can keep a secret. If you ever want to get out onto the roof or if you need me when I’m in my room, my code it 876554, got it?”_

Keith’s eyes flew open, and he spared only one moment of hesitation. What if it didn’t work? Shiro had been gone for around a year now, Keith thought at least, it would make sense for his codes to have been canceled by now.

But the voices were getting closer, and Keith didn’t have any other ideas, so he quickly typed in the set of numbers, and to his utter relief, there was a clicking noise as the door unlocked, and he quickly flung himself inside and closed the door quickly and quietly behind him.

Not a moment too soon, he realized as he heard the voices pass right by. Keith took a moment, leaning against the door, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths to calm his racing heart. That had been too close. He needed a plan for if he did run into anyone, but for now his only thoughts were to avoid them as much as possible.

Once his heart had calmed to a normal-ish rhythm, Keith opened his eyes and glanced around the room. Metal tables and shelves stretched out in front of him, each holding several different machines or liquids, many of the items being placed within containers like metal boxes or glass vials. Everything was lit up harshly with an artificial glow, as there were no windows.

 _Go forward._ Keith obeyed the voice without question, carefully making his way between two of the long tables. He was sure not to touch anything.

 _Stop._ Keith stopped immediately, on his one side there was some sort of human robot/machine thing that looked like it had had it’s torso on down blown up, leaving a severed head with scorch marks at the base of its neck. It was sort of creepy, Keith wasn’t going to lie, but he was at least grateful that whoever had made it hadn’t given it a false skin over the metal plating of it’s head, because that would make it so much creepier.

On Keith’s other side was a metal box, and it scared Keith as much as the head did, if not more so. Anything could be inside of it, and after seeing the Garrison’s official lab once when he went with Shiro to deliver some food to his friend Matt, Keith knew of some of the monstrosities that could come from the Garrison’s lab. Keith shuddered at the thought of some of the things he had seen down there.

_Grab the box. Carefully. You’ll need it._

Of course the thing would have him take the box. Why wouldn’t it? Keith considered for a moment whether he should open it up right here to see what was inside, but ended up deciding against it. Sometimes, it was better to leave things unknown.

Keith picked up the box and made his way back to the door, pausing briefly to make sure the coast was clear before hurrying out to his bike. Within a minute, he was zooming away from the Garrison with the box strapped securely to the back of his bike. He knew that he should probably be concerned about the box blowing up or something, but he found that he didn’t really care all that much (the thing seemed displeased at this train of thought).

Keith didn’t open the box until a week later, when he got the impression that it was time. He had considered looking in the box throughout that week, but he had decided against it each time. Not for any particular reason, though every time he considered opening it, he got the impression that it wasn’t time yet.

However, today he got the sense that it was time, and so he found himself opening the box. It took a moment, the lid was heavy, but he managed, and was greeted with the sight of something that looked suspiciously like the TNT seen in cartoons. He felt a purr in the back of his mind at the sight, which meant the thing liked what he grabbed, but Keith was more concerned about what he was supposed to do with the explosives.

As if sensing his unease, Keith felt a calmness invade his mind. _Not to hurt anyone. Just distract._

Keith felt his shoulders slump slightly in relief, but the question was still there, what was he supposed to use the explosives as a distraction for?

 _Wait._ The voice told him, and Keith listened, sitting on his porch with the explosives at his side and watching the sky as day shifted to night.

Keith didn’t know how long he sat there for, but when he saw something streak across the sky and crash near the Garrison, he did not hesitate as he leapt to his feet, grabbed the explosives, and jumped on his bike, taking off to in the direction that the thing lead him.

He didn’t hesitate when it told him to put the explosives near the Garrison to cause a distraction from the crash-site. Nor did he hesitate when it told him to go in and he took down the Garrison workers in lab coats.

The only time he hesitated was when he saw who was on the gurney. Because Keith had finally come to terms that his brother was dead. But there was no mistaking Shiro, even with his forelock white and a huge scar across the bridge of his nose.

Before he was aware of it, Keith was cutting through Shiro’s bindings with his knife that he always carried with him, and he was hoisting Shiro up. Then all of a sudden there was another boy who looked vaguely familiar and was insisting that he was ‘Keith’s rival’ and that he was ‘going to save Shiro’ and two of the boy’s companions were there too. Keith was still too shocked that he had found his brother after all this time to really react to everything properly, so he let them on his bike.

(It was something that he normally never would have done, letting strangers onto his bike, and when he first overcame his shock, he regretted it. Now though…)

 

***

 

When Shiro had been pronounced dead, Keith was sure that he would never have a family again. When he was kicked out of the Garrison, he was sure that he was going to be forced to live in the silence of the desert till he grew mad and died. Never did he dream of finding a family again.

But that was what he had found here on the Altean Castle-ship. And with the discovery of family, he discovered something else too.

The Castle-ship was never silent, with the constant presence of the soft whining and whirring of its inner workings. Not that it was quiet enough to hear those very often anyways.

Not with Coran’s wild tales from his childhood, not with Allura’s battle plans, not with Pidge’s machines causing some sort of racket, not with the sound Hunk making food in the kitchen, not with Lance’s constant stream of talking, and not with Shiro’s words of encouragement.

Keith no longer had to pretend that he wasn’t alone, now he actually wasn’t. He no longer had to deal with those terrible silent nights, there was always some sort of noise here.

Because, here, silence was no longer the loudest sound.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope that you enjoyed! This was really fun to write out, and actually one of the main reasons I got a AO3 account was to post this fic. (I ended up getting the first chapter of 'I've turned into a Monster' out first, and then I sort of forgot about this one for a while, so that's why it hasn't been posted yet).  
> Anywho, Thanks for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> -MasterOfMyDestiny


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